The assignment: create an acrylic painting that features a prominent shadow, and use complementary colors in the piece. I ended up taking photos of my dad while he stood on a ladder and held a pogo stick in place. I put wire in his tie so that it would stay in place and look like it was flying back in the wind as he pogoed to work with briefcase in hand. Of course, it's nearly impossible to pogo well with only one hand on the handles, but this scene is not exactly something you'd normally see anyway, and that adds to the surrealness of the situation. I used the shadow that he cast onto the driveway and the position of it and then had to shoot the background in a different location to show that he was going down the street, making sure that the sun was shining down the road in the same direction that it had been shining on my dad. I was even more lucky with the background; the colors in it were nearly perfect to go with the color scheme of blues and oranges that I was going with. I ended up using and mixing only cerulean blue hue, cadmium red light (orange), black and white on the whole piece with the exception of a little yellow mixed in with the orange for some parts of the background and a little yellow mixed with the blue for the tie. The squinting, serious expression on my dad's face is perfect, contrasting with the ridiculousness of the situation.
6.75" x 19"
I'll guess 50 hours
spring/summer 2006